


Capture

by TalicTriesToWrite



Series: A Collection of Stray Kids Oneshots [5]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Cancer, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, From 1888 to February 2019, Gen, HIV/AIDS, Homophobia, Hopeful Ending, Hwang Hyunjin is a Sweetheart, Idols, Kim Seungmin is Whipped, Kim Seungmin-centric, M/M, Minor Character Death, Photographer Kim Seungmin, Reincarnation, Symbolism, Temporary Character Death, Timelines, Violence, War, a lot of death but he comes back alive, mark this for later u cowards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26136160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalicTriesToWrite/pseuds/TalicTriesToWrite
Summary: Kim Seungmin had always loved cameras. Each life he lived, somehow a camera or a picture always made its way into his hands, whether it was taking a photo of Halley’s comet in 1910, or whether he fighting for his life in the hells of war.One lifetime, he decides to become a photographer. One lifetime he meets model Hwang Hyunjin.And then his cycle of lives start to change.
Relationships: Hwang Hyunjin/Kim Seungmin
Series: A Collection of Stray Kids Oneshots [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564417
Comments: 29
Kudos: 98





	Capture

Seungmin had always loved cameras.

His second life was a good one; born into an easy wealth, an easy existence. His name had also been Seungmin then, like it was every life, like it was in his prior one too.

But his first life hadn’t been so great. He only lived for a few months until he was kidnapped from his mother’s helpless arms and killed during the Baby Riots of Joseon Korea, 1888; his eyes used to create, ironically, camera lenses.

But he hadn’t discovered that fact until one of his more recent lives when the internet was available and accessible, so he decided not to ruminate on that.

Anyway, back to his second life a rich kid, among the first Korean migrants to the 'grand America' with a love for photography. So, on his twenty-first birthday, the twenty-second of September 1909, his father bought him a camera.

“Use it well, boy,” his father smiled, ruffling his hair, like he did when he was just a child. And well, he did.

Eight months later he happened to have it on him when Halley’s comet appeared.

“Did you see it?” his mother asked, frantic.

Seungmin showed her the blurry image on his camera of barely anything.

“I _was_ there!” he whined when his father laughed at his

“This is no time for jokes!” His mother frowned. “I’ve read it in the magazines! Earth was caught in the comet’s tail! The gas will kill us all!”

The family wore gas masks for the rest of the week, just like many of his college did. He showed them the photo of Halley’s Comet and it pulled the attention of his white peers for a few seconds before they started calling him racist names again.

He didn’t mind though, because he had his camera and his camera had caught a moment of history.

His second life ended, however, at the age of thirty. He was drafted among the first American soldiers to arrive on French land to help in the war effort, the greatest war the world had ever seen.

Everywhere Seungmin walked was decimated by bloodshed. He took his camera with him though, despite his mother’s wailing protest.

_“It’s too heavy Seungmin,”_ she had cried. _“It’ll slow you down – please leave it here and I’ll look after it until you come back.”_

He had turned to her then, tears in his own eyes. _“I might not ever come back here, Ma. This camera was Dad’s gift to me, don’t you understand?”_

She had been quiet then, let him go with nothing more than a sorrowful kiss to his cheek and stuffing a white handkerchief into his left pocket.

His father had passed three years earlier, natural causes. In some ways, Seungmin was glad. That man’s heart was too pure for the hell that was war.

He took photos of his friends alive (plus one where he begrudgingly let someone take one of him and his two closet friends) then more photos of when they passed. Photos of their bodies in hopes he would serve them some sort of justice. Images transcended time; he knew it did.

Only when he was running for his life from German artillery at Rogue Bouquet did he partially regret the camera, weighing his backpack, his body down, as gunfire echoed around him.

He hadn’t been able to run fast enough, as a bullet lodged into his left thigh, then with a lucky shot into his neck. However, he doubted the camera would have made much difference to the outcome.

Death was a part of war.

When he was born again on the twenty-second of September 1918, the war still wasn’t over. His new family, another one in the United States, was poor, and many of his brothers were drafted into war to pay for the upbringing of himself.

He never knew their names, never saw their faces. He wondered if anyone had found his camera from his previous life, wondered if the photos would ever be able to recover.

This life, he never owned a camera. Instead, he passed by shops that had magazines and pictures plastered on the windows (after eighteen-hour shifts at the local factory, he always paused there just to look at them before going back home to feed his younger sisters.)

The photos gave some obscure hope, some drive to do better.

He grew up and fell in love.

She was a beautiful woman, American, but she didn’t seem to mind his race unlike the rest of society.

She sang beautiful melodies, rich with purity and love, and her voice was something Seungmin loved to hear whether they were cleaning the kitchen or watching the fireworks.

The took a photo at their wedding. Seungmin loved that picture.

Eventually, they had two daughters of their own.

Their mother sang them lullabies. He taught them Korean as well as he could.

This life he had finally had a legacy; children; he didn’t just die a baby or die in a pile of bodies.

He thought he had escaped war when it ended sometime during his childhood, but history seemed to repeat itself with the Second World War.

“Are you going off to fight?” one of his daughters innocently asked.

Seungmin slung his backpack over his shoulder, bitter and distraught that he was leaving the people he loved most in the world behind. “Yes.”

“Do you have to?”

He stared at her eyes; softened his tone. “Yes, Daddy will be back home soon, okay?”

He kissed his wife. She slipped him a handkerchief just like his previous mother did. Red.

“Be safe Seungmin,” she begged, a tear she left unshed cornered in her eye.

Seungmin kissed her again, a futile promise. “I will be.”

He stared at the faces of his daughters, trying his hardest to take a photo of them in his mind.

Then he left.

His third life ended eerily similar to the second, except instead of drowning in blood from bullets he drowned in cold, cold water.

_“Sir, we’ve been hit_ ,” his walkie talkie crackled.

Seungmin swallowed. He could hear the fear in the young cadet’s voice over the line, the screams in the background.

He tried his best, as the eldest of the warship USS Reuben James, to remain strong, remain calm. He dialled it in, conveying it to the captain of the ship.

The man was inexperienced, foolish, but he was white. And that outweighed all of Seungmin’s experience.

They sank in minutes.

As the below-freezing water burned his ears, burned his throat, burned his everything, he distantly was reminded of the rude jeers of his classmates from his class in both his second life and this one.

He wondered if he’d ever live in a white-dominated place where he was treated as an equal. He prayed that next life he’d wake up in Korea.

He heard the loving murmur of lullabies and melodies sound through the dark, dark, sea.

In his dying choked breaths, he wrapped his hand around his crimson handkerchief, retrieved the image of his two little girls, back at home, waiting for him.

He hoped they would grow into women like their mother.

His final prayers were answered, as he was born in Korea.

Unfortunately, 1942 was not a good time to be born in Korea. Because it was under Japanese rule.

He didn’t remember much, but he remembered the hunger. He remembered his mother’s stifled cries at the accident that took his father’s life.

And once again he was raised without someone to call ‘ _Appa._ ’

When Japanese rule ended with its surrender from the war he had once fought in, he thought he was free.

“We’re safe now, Minnie,” his mother croaked, her throat destroyed by smoke inhalation from her work under the Japanese. “We belong to a new place now: North Korea.”

And he, as any child would, believed her.

But he should have known the world was a cruel, cruel place. Every life he lived violence ripped him apart.

“ _The rats of South Korea are brainwashed by the filthy Americans,_ ” the radio reported. Seungmin, aged eight, listened carefully.

“ _The honourable North Korea has no other option but to proceed into South Korea, as a form of peace, as a form of glory-_ ”

The radio cut off as his mother stopped it. She looked older than any thirty-year-old should.

“It’s not going to be peaceful, is it?” he asked, putting down his toy truck.

His mother stiffened. “I don’t think so, Minnie.”

“I feel like my whole life is surrounded by war,” he said, his lip trembling.

“Aish, Minnie,” his mother put the radio away, leaning beside him. “Don’t say that we’re going to be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

He set the table for seven people when dinner came around. He observed as his mother’s friends came and visited, no children of their own.

“Go upstairs and play, Seungminnie,” his mother ushered him away. So, he did.

The visitors came back every Saturday, sometimes there was up to sixty people gathered in their living room, cheering a similar phrase: ‘ _resist._ ’ Each time his mother sent him away, but life was returning to her eyes, he could see it.

She looked young again by the time the war was over by 1953.

One day she returned home with two small booklets.

“What are these?” he asked, opening one.

There he saw his face and above it the name _‘Ju Leeseok.’_

She paused. “South Korean passports, honey.”

He frowned. “But we’re North Korean. And the law states we can’t leave the country.”

“I know, Minnie, I know,” she replied, wrapping him in a hug. “It’s in case of an emergency, okay? We’ll be fine.”

But another year later, when he was just twelve, something went wrong.

The government wanted his mother. She had been handing out anti-North Korean regime flyers.

“You have to leave, Seungmin, now!” she woke him up in the middle of the night. She shoved a packed bag into his hand and forced the expensive runners she had bought for him as a birthday present onto his feet.

“What’s going on?” he asked, breathless, scared.

She held his cheek her eyes watering. “Eomma is sorry, Seungmin, so, so sorry, but one day you’ll understand.”

And together they walked to a strange area Seungmin had never been, hiding from the North Korean officials that strutted the streets, guns at their side. He’d never breached the nation-wide curfew before. It was somewhat exhilarating despite the growing sense of dread in his stomach.

“I love you with my everything, okay?” his mother said to him as she handed him over to one of her friends. “My beautiful boy.”

“Eomma?” he asked, tears falling down his cheeks. “Where are you going? Why don’t you come with me?”

She smiled, kissed his cheek. “You’ll understand one day, Minnie, stay strong for Eomma, okay? You’ve always been strong. I love you.”

And with that, she left. Seungmin watched her leave.

“I’ll look after you, son,” the man said, a sad smile on his face. “I set up a bed for you, would you like one or two pillows?”

He walked into the room, and sure enough, there was a bed; if a thin blanket on a wooden floor counted as one. Distantly he remembered his mother telling him they were extremely lucky, and that almost every other North Korean could barely afford a decent meal.

So, he didn’t complain, just accepted the other pillow and the man’s help with a bow.

And that was what his life became for the next year.

He celebrated his thirteenth birthday with no cake, no father, no mother.

“We’re going to get you into South Korea, son,” the man said one evening.

Seungmin paused. “What?”

“South Korea. It’s a place where you can be free, live a better life.”

Free. Seungmin doubted it was possible.

Instead, he asked, hopeful, “Will my mother be there?”

The man offered him another spoonful of rice, stalling. “It was her strongest wish that you would grow old in South Korea.”

And Seungmin believed it because that’s just who his mother was.

Getting into South Korea was no easy feat. For the next month he was passed around from mother’s friends, the small amount of them that were left, until one got his safe passage to a place called China.

The fake passport served useful after all.

“You are not Kim Seungmin anymore,” a girl, not looking much older than himself warned.

Seungmin glanced to her, her eyes narrowed and disciplined. But as she spoke his harsh reality, she shared him some of her rations of bread.

Seungmin liked her, he decided. She reminded him of the beautiful woman of his first and only marriage.

“You are a South Korean citizen, returning home after a holiday. Nothing more, nothing else. Get to Seoul.”

When he set foot in the land of his mother’s dreams, he finally understood why she fought so hard. It was almost a utopia, compared to the poverty he often viewed in North Korea. He had always known he was lucky there, but here everyone in the main city had a house, a bed, some food.

Someone collected him from Seoul, another one of his mother’s connections he supposed.

“We will never use your real name while you are with us for your own safety,” his foster father said as they walked back to his apartment. “But do know you are welcome and as long as you let me, I will do my best to treat you like my own son.”

Seungmin appreciated the sentiment, but he didn’t let himself believe it.

“My family was separated by the division,” his foster father told him one afternoon. “My mother’s side here and my father’s side, along with more brother’s over there.”

Seungmin, now fifteen, hummed. “Do you think they’ll ever meet each other again?”

He expected some optimism, some hope like his mother always had, but instead the man sighed. “No, I think this place will never truly recover.”

And that was that.

Despite the man’s pessimism, a trait that even though Seungmin had himself, decided he despised, his foster father was the person who reintroduced him to something he had almost forgotten. Cameras.

“They’re so small,” he said in wonder, running his hand over one of the two in sight.

“Really?”

He thought of the camera he had taken to war, the first one which seemed like so long ago. “Yes, they’re beautiful.”

“Have this one,” the father smiled, throwing him one.

Seungmin caught it and marvelled at how light it was. “T-Thank you.”

When he took the first photo, he felt like he was searching for Halley’s Comet again. It made him feel young, it made him feel like he had a purpose, it made him feel free.

He gave up on his education at fifteen. His foster parents didn’t refute, gave him a hug. Briefly, he entertained the idea of these selfless people becoming family but squashed it. His father of this lifetime was killed in Japanese labour, and his mother - he would truly never know what happened to her. But she had given him up and died to save him. That he was sure of.

So, no, he wouldn’t accept this foster family, no matter their silent smiles and unwavering support.

Every family he ever had, even the once he had created, were gone.

In fact, _he_ was the only one to ever be forced through another lifetime of pain. He had to witness death more times than anyone, die himself to kidnappers or gunshots or cold Icelandic waters.

It was unfair. It made him resentful and bitter of the world around him. It made him want to scream and cry and beg to die for a final time. But it kept going. That was life.

At seventeen he got an internship into a photography company. He was kicked around for a few months, getting coffees and getting yelled at until he finally had a chance to prove himself at a shoot.

“These are pretty good,” the manager said, flicking through the photos. “Good composition, good settings for the lighting, good zoom… you seem to be a natural.”

“T-Thank you _sunbaenim,_ ” he bowed before straightening back up wishing he wouldn’t stutter.

“I like you, kid,” the manager smiled, setting the camera down. “What’s your name?”

Seungmin bit the inside of his cheek. “Ju Leeseok.”

“Alright, Ju Leesok, let’s get you some work.”

For the next five years, Seungmin, under his alias, worked. Slowly he became respected and moved up in the company, from general photographer to director for a short while then to the executive photographer.

He enjoyed his work. He liked to call it an art. By twenty-two, he was living in his own studio apartment in Seoul, and with the increasingly improving and constantly changing technology of cameras, he was… alright.

When the 1964 Pentax Spotmatic camera came to the market, he quickly bought one, experimented with it and decided it would do.

Then, he met Hwang Hyunjin. It was nothing extraordinary, really. No electricity, no flames of passion, just a business shoot.

Sure, Seungmin couldn’t deny the handsome structure of the elder’s face, or the way his proportions were perfect.

“Turn to your left,” his instructed levelly, snapping another photo. The boy obeyed.

When the model shoot finished, the elder introduced himself.

“I’m Hwang Hyunjin, nice to meet you,” he said with a bow.

Seungmin got that sinking feeling in his gut, like he did every time when he had to introduce himself with the name not given to him by his mother. “Ju Leeseok.”

Hyunjin offered a small smile, his gaze interested. “You seem rather talented with the camera there, how long have you been using it?”

“My whole life.”

Hyunjin nodded, opening his mouth to ask another question before his manager called him away. “I hope I see you again, Ju Leeseok.”

Seungmin wasn’t quite sure what repelled him to answer a quick, “You too.”

Hyunjin shot him a smile from over his shoulder. Seungmin shot another photograph.

And as fate would have it, they did meet again.

“Leeseok?” a familiar voice asked.

Seungmin looked away from his newspaper and cup of morning coffee, staring at the familiar figure. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” Hyunjin pointed dumbly to his own chest. “Hyunjin. We met two weeks ago at the model shoot.”

_I could never forget your face._

“I know,” Seungmin replied blankly looking back down at his paper. “Sit.”

And surprisingly, Hyunjin did.

“You can read English?” the man asked, nodding at his paper.

Seungmin clenched his fists around the pages. Of course – how could he be so stupid! Every week he met with the newspaper vendor who somehow always had a ‘New York Times’ for him, no matter the slow wave of anti-foreigners trickling into Korea.

“Somewhat,” he eventually decided on, closing the newspaper.

They sat in silence for a few moments, both turning to the café’s television out of mock interest.

“Choi Eunhee,” Hyunjin noted, referring to the actress. “I think she’ll win most popular star of the year; she’s my role model. Idol, if you will.

Seungmin hummed in agreement but Hyunjin just frowned, looking perplexed.

“You don’t speak much, do you?”

Seungmin blinked lazily, sipping his coffee. “I don’t need to.”

“What do you mean?”

Seungmin held Hyunjin’s gaze, captured by his beauty. The way his brown eyes glimmered in the morning sunlight, sparkled with almost golden flecks, that Seungmin wasn’t sure if he was imaging or not.

“Can I take a photo of you?” he asked instead of answering.

Hyunjin nodded, his frown erased.

And so, Seungmin did.

Over time, they kept meeting at the café and soon enough Hyunjin got used to his clipped one-word answers and Seungmin got used to Hyunjin’s rambling and anecdotal stories.

He like to talk about his family a lot, Seungmin noticed as the elder animatedly described something from his childhood. His heart tugged at the reminder of his own family from this life, his families from before.

The television showed propaganda, a black and white screen of missiles and animosity of the Cold War.

“Hyunjin-hyung,” he interrupted. “What do you feel about North Korea?”

Hyunjin looked taken aback by the question. “L-Leeseok, I don’t think we should discuss this in public.”

“Then come to my place,” Seungmin answered quickly.

Hyunjin obeyed.

“I’ve never really thought about it before, I’m sure the people there are okay, just ruled incorrectly,” was Hyunjin’s answer. “Why do you ask?”

“My mother lived there,” he replied sadly.

Hyunjin turned to him. “She came back?”

“No.”

Hyunjin took his hand then, the skin soft and grasp gentle. Seungmin didn’t know what to say, what to feel, or why his heart fluttered. So, he just squeezed back.

Their relationship changed as another year went by.

It was built on a mutual enchantment, a mutual intrigue and mutual trust.

Sometimes their friendship went beyond the lines of platonic, something Seungmin didn’t quite know what to make of. He knew South Korea would never accept it, so they both kept their fleeting touches in the cover of the darkness, quiet.

When a girl tried to flirt with Hyunjin one photoshoot, he felt an odd jealously flicker through his veins, ignite a green flame that pricked and itched his entire skin. The next seven shots didn’t come out very well, and he brushed his team away, brushed Hyunjin away when the elder asked about it that night.

“Why are you _angry_ at me Leeseok?!” Hyunjin snapped, his divine face twisted into a slow-building frustration.

“It’s nothing, Hyunjin-hyung, go home,” he bit back, shrugging off the elder’s advance.

The elder looked affronted, betrayed. “Why do you always push me away?”

Seungmin felt his body freeze.

He masked his emotions. “It’s for the better.”

The man in front him, cheeks reddened then became tainted by tears. “Leeseok, I love you but sometimes I have no idea who you even _are-”_

_“You don’t!”_ Seungmin snapped, his vision red. “Hyung, you don’t even know who I am! Where I came from, or my real name!”

And that was the tipping point.

Pallid, like a ghost, Hyunjin whispered, “ _What?”_

Seungmin wondered when his own cheeks became wet. “My name is _not_ Ju Leeseok, Hyung. The name my mother gave to me is Kim Seungmin. _I’m_ Kim Seungmin.”

Hyunjin toppled onto the nearest seat, bewildered. “W-Why have you lied to me?”

Seungmin felt a lump rise in his throat. “After Japan surrendered, I was on the other side. I’m North Korean. A-A defector.”

He waited nervously for Hyunjin to say something, anything. It was a strange reversal of their relationship: for once Seungmin was talking and Hyunjin was not.

“Hyung?” he asked feebly, standing away from the other.

“S… _Seungmin?”_

The name was unfamiliar on the boy’s lips and Seungmin felt another tear fall down his cheek. It was unfamiliar, yet somehow it was everything he ever imagined.

“Do you…” he started, unsure, and unable to gauge Hyunjin’s reaction. “Are you still… okay with me?”

Hyunjin took another moment to respond. “Yeah, I’ll just… go home for tonight, okay?”

And Seungmin watched him leave.

The next photoshoot was stilted, awkward, airing on the edge of uncertainty and confrontation.

The photos came out terribly. Seungmin was reprimanded in the head office.

What he didn’t expect is for Hyunjin to be waiting outside for him, his fingers tapping on his leg checking the time again and again.

“H-Hey,” he shot up immediately when Seungmin rounded the corner.

“Hey,” Seungmin replied, blunt, clipped.

It was like they were back to day one.

“Can we get some coffee?” Hyunjin asked, his eyes, his beautiful eyes, questioning; hesitant.

“Okay.”

They stayed in the café until it closed.

Seungmin told him about his life, this one, about his father he never knew, about his life in North Korea. When he spoke about his mother, his first time in a decade he let himself cry again – told stories about her bravery, her strength, her passion to find the truth and expose it.

He told of how she loved him, and how she had died alone for him.

Hyunjin was quiet for a very long time.

“Seungmin, I love you for who you are; no matter where you are born, no matter your name. I love you for you.”

Seungmin felt warmth encapsulate his whole being.

“I love you too, Hyunjin.”

And that was the real start of Kim Seungmin and Hwang Hyunjin.

Hwang Hyunjin was like no one he had ever met before.

He was beautiful, he was outspoken, he was respectable, he was kind. But there was a sense of freedom permeating the air around him wherever he walked that Seungmin was astounded by. That, and Hyunjin’s eyes were what kept them together.

After a few more months Seungmin dropped the honorifical ‘hyung’ whether he called the elder to see or do something. Usually, couples stopped talking formally to one another when they started their relationship, but as there was no official date for them – rather a blur – he made the decision himself. He liked it – it was a symbol that their love transcended time, age, formalities – it was just them.

They became a duo by the end of the 1960s, Hyunjin only letting Seungmin take his shots, and it proved successful. By the early seventies, Hwang Hyunjin was a household name, plastered on magazines and advertisements, especially after the ‘space’ themed photoshoot to celebrate the first moon landing.

“I look a little old in this one, don’t I,” Hyunjin attempted a joke when his most recent campaign was released.

They were both nearing thirty now. The age scared Seungmin – he’s never made it to thirty before.

“You look beautiful to me,” he answered honestly, his voice below a whisper.

When they returned to Seungmin’s apartment that night, they kissed, full of passion, full of grace, and full of freedom.

“No one can find out,” Hyunjin reminded him as they lied in bed, just like he said every time.

Seungmin felt his heart clench. “Do you regret it? Do you regret us?”

Hyunjin turned to him, his eyes tearful, but a soft smile on his face. “Never.”

They watched Choi Eunhee movies on the weekends, toured South Korea for Hyunjin’s modelling on the weekdays.

When questioned why they shared a hotel room, they claimed it was cheaper. Behind closed doors, they were passionate, loving, soft, happy.

Girls fawning over Hyunjin didn’t bother him anymore. In actuality, it became some sort of an inside joke.

He definitely wasn’t expecting when a prestigious agency approached him one day.

“Can we have you and Hyunjin in for a shoot?” they asked.

“Hyunjin?” Seungmin asked carefully. He had become the other’s manager of sorts.

“No,” the agency insisted. “Hyunjin _and you,_ sir. We would be interested in a photoshoot featuring both of you for our monthly cover.”

Surprised, Seungmin nodded.

Being in front of the camera rather than behind it was a thrilling, new experience.

“You look like you were made for this,” Hyunjin whispered seductively in his ear nipping the earlobe when they had a five-minute break.

Seungmin blamed his red cheeks on the blush.

When the magazine came out, it was the company’s bestseller. Seungmin didn’t know why, but he felt slightly uneasy with all the attention.

He was supposed to live quietly, make no noise, draw no attention to himself. He was a secret North Korean defector, and with the ending of the Cold War, tensions between the two places were hostile.

What if someone found out? What would happen to Hyunjin?

“Do you ever want to reveal your real name?” Hyunjin asked one evening as they lounged around, flipping through the pages of the magazine.

Seungmin eyed the cover. ‘ _Model Hwang Hyunjin and Photographer Ju Leeseok make a Comeback._ ’

“No,” he said firmly. “No one can find out.”

Hyunjin looked hurt at the repetition of his very own words. “Okay, Min, okay; no one will ever know.”

And no one ever did. They lived the rest of their years in simplicity: a photoshoot here, a photoshoot there. It was calm despite the storm of paparazzi; quiet. Even though they became South Korea’s most aspired duo at some point in the seventies, it was like they lived in a different world.

Reality hit in two ways.

“She’s been taken?” Hyunjin exclaimed, racing to the television to see the news.

“She’s gone!” Seungmin confirmed pointing to the news. “North Korea captured her while she was in Hong Kong!”

The disappearance of Choi Eunhee, in January 1978, startled South Korea. One of the most beloved stars, one of the most rewarded actresses was simply gone.

Reality hit in a second way a few years later, this one a little closer to the heart.

“Hyunjin have you lost weight?” Seungmin asked cautiously, the other’s bare chest, only littered with small bruises from the previous night.

“Hm, no?” Hyunjin tied up his satin robe with practised ease.

Seungmin bit his lip in worry. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

He thought it was a Hyunjin problem; one as a model. Maybe he was just losing some weight to look good for his next shoot – but then why would he lie?

Turns out it wasn’t a Hyunjin, because a few weeks later his own jeans fit a little loose.

And then Hyunjin had a fever after his most recent shoot.

That’s when Seungmin started to worry.

“It’s probably nothing, babe,” Hyunjin attempted a weak smile. “It’ll pass in a few days.”

But it didn’t. Seungmin cancelled the other’s advertisement that had been planned a month in advance.

Slowly he started feeling a new strange pain in his abdomen, and some swelling in the rather unfortunate and embarrassing area of his groin.

He phoned his foster father who studied medicine. He told him it was probably just the process of getting old. Seungmin hated the reminded of his, and Hyunjin’s age. They were forty-three now – and their greying hair reminded him of it.

But something still didn’t sit quite right, and it worried him to no end. He hurried along to the library, leaving Hyunjin at the apartment with an in-home nurse who promised not to say a word.

The computer was a large foreign piece of technology. A student recognised him, helped him out, taught him briefly how to use the internet and the keyboard. He made sure there was no one around him to see what he typed. There wasn’t; the library was nearing closing time.

And systematically he started typing in his own and Hyunjin’s symptoms.

_‘Weight loss, fever, skin rash, being tired all the time, pain in mid-section and groin area.’_

And nothing came up.

Impatiently, he prodded the side of the heavy desk computer, wondering if clicking a certain button would make it work. Nothing happened.

He glanced around for the student that helped him earlier, but she was gone.

He tried again, taking out a few symptoms and there were a few results, but it was just ‘fever’ or ‘autoimmune issues of the elderly.’

He bit his lip, imagining Hyunjin’s laboured breaths. Why were they falling ill? What was the one thing they were doing, that other men his age, weren’t?

His mind whirring, he changed to an American browser service, his fluency in English helping once more.

He typed in the symptoms.

An abundance of links appeared. But one caught his eye.

It made his stomach tense, furthering the pain he was in.

_‘Homosexuality Punished! New Virus found in US 1981 linked to Gay Sexual Intercourse.’_

He bit his lip, checked over his shoulder then clicked ‘read more.’

He felt his heart drop as he continued researching. This disease had been present in the United States for four years now it seemed: named AIDS.

It scared him more than war ever did.

Because this time, the love of his life could die from it too.

He went home and gratingly told Hyunjin the news.

“No one can find out-” Hyunjin broke off into a cough. “No one can find out how we got it, okay?”

And Seungmin agreed. Because what else could he do?

His partner was right – there was no cure, there was no point in outing themselves as infected and gay just to have everything they worked for ruined.

As he cleaned the kitchen, Seungmin hummed melodies he brought from another lifetime. When he saw a packet of three handkerchiefs, one navy, one red and one white he bought them and kept the red and whites ones for himself.

Somehow, they both felt a little better; Hyunjin recovered from the crux of his fever, Seungmin from the swelling and pain of his groin.

Hyunjin retired from his modelling, saying to the public he wanted a quiet life to live his next many years.

Together they moved out of Seoul. Seungmin found a beautiful place in the countryside hidden by orange-green maple trees and somewhere they could escape from the eyes of the media, the reality of their imminent deaths.

He spent his time cleaning, something he found he quite enjoyed, and taking photos, specialising on nature and his favourite subject: his partner.

“Did you know Halley’s Comet is expected to return this year?” Hyunjin asked.

Seungmin was painfully reminded of his second life, his father’s laugh, his mother’s frantic worry, the white handkercheif.

“Let’s see it together, Hyunjin,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

Hyunjin laughed and agreed, his hair glimmering in the sunlight. Seungmin snapped another photo.

The sighting was rather unspectacular. Despite the far improved camera quality, it was the comet that barely revealed itself.

“Well, that was that,” Hyunjin said with another joyous laugh.

The February chill overtook their house and Seungmin carefully got up to fix the blanket over Hyunjin’s wheelchair.

To make up for barely seeing the comet at all, he took a photo of the sun setting over the snowy hills and lines of maple trees instead.

“These pictures will outlive us, Jinnie,” he mused, placing in a new roll of film. “They’ll tell our stories to the future generations.”

“I love it when you talk about your cameras,” Hyunjin snickered, his face golden with the setting orange sun.

Seungmin’s hands itched to take another photo, but the image seemed private. Ethereal.

“I love you, Hyunjin,” he said finally.

“I love you too.”

He didn’t know how he survived through Hyunjin’s death. It was near the end of February when the snow started to melt again.

“I got to see the comet with you,” Hyunjin croaked his eyes filled with tears.

Seungmin sobbed and kissed his brow, then his cheek, then his lips for the final time.

“You know what to do, Seungmin, I love you with all my heart.”

Seungmin held his hand and together they watched the snow.

He contacted the media after, detailing how cancer had taken his beautiful Hwang Hyunjin’s life.

‘ _He has always been my best friend,_ ’ he wrote to the magazines that contacted him. ‘ _I will love him for the rest of my life._ ’

But that wasn’t too long either, AIDS taking his toll quicker with nothing to live for.

Hyunjin’s birthday on the twentieth was a lonely event. He flicked through every photo he had ever taken of the elder, even the ones from his very first session.

It was the twenty-third when he felt death coming again.

“Thank you for taking care of me,” he rasped to his foster father as his body destroyed itself. “I’m sorry I never tried harder to let you into my life.”

Before he left, he checked his and Hyunjin’s wills, leaving the house for North Korean defectors no matter how strange the media would find that. Then, so he could hear something as he faded away, he turned on the television.

_“Breaking news!_ _South Korean superstar Choi Eunhee has escaped North Korea to the US Embassy in Venice with the missing film director and her husband Shin Sangok!_ ”

His eyes watered as the news played. Hyunjin would have loved to hear this before he passed.

So, with tears running down his cheeks, but a final content smile on his face he let death overcome him.

He wasn’t quite sure why, but he had expected his fourth life to be his final one.

So, when he was born again, this time into a foreign place called Australia on the twenty-second of September 1986, he felt bitter.

When he was born with an unremovable cancerous tumour in his leg, he was even more bitter.

Like in his second life, he was born into a wealthy family, one that could pay for treatments for better or worse. The first ten years of his life blurred together in hospital visits, medical check-ups and days he was sport lessons at school he was too weak to participate in.

His father was in his life this time. The man was tall, quiet and soothing; with a love for sports, especially baseball.

Every time there was a game near them, his father would take him to see it, despite baseball not being very popular in Australia. Seungmin loved the way the bat cracked like fireworks when it hit the ball, loved the thrill of the cheer when people ran.

He was too weak to join the little team that played on Saturday’s. He promised to himself if he lived another life, he would try and play baseball, maybe even become a professional.

He couldn’t decide if growing into a young boy was difficult or not. Sure, the pain was indescribable, but he wasn’t starving and working in factories or running for his life to China. Cancer held nothing to the emotional turmoil of watching his friends drown in blood or water – because the only scary thing about it was his inevitable death – and he wasn’t scared of dying anymore.

When he was ten, however, something changed.

“See you again for your next check-up, Seungmin,” the smiling doctor said to him.

“Goodbye,” he replied, walking down the halls, close to the bar lining the side of the wall in case he tripped.

And then he saw it. Saw him.

He looked as beautiful as Seungmin remembered.

But just like his last life, he was confined to a wheelchair.

Seungmin was still entranced when the boy rolled into his ‘healing session,’ a weekly (mandatory) therapy place for kids with cancer in the hospital.

“I’m new here,” the boy started. “My English name is Sam, but if you want, you can call me by my real name – Hyunjin.”

Seungmin felt his heart leap into his throat. This was the moment he was waiting for. But… would Hyunjin remember him?

They made eye contact from across the circle.

The already little colour in Hyunjin’s face drained in an instant.

And that’s when Seungmin knew.

He broke out into a smile. And Hyunjin smiled back.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Hyunjin whispered, rolling around in a circle.

Seungmin had taken him to a large storage room he liked to spend time in to escape from ‘healing sessions’ so they could talk privately.

“Do you remember everything?” Seungmin asked, the words heavy on his tongue.

Hyunjin swivelled to him. “Don’t you?”

“I do,” Seungmin professed. “I remember the photography, the modelling, the secrecy, the media, the… us.”

Hyunjin relaxed into his wheelchair before piping up again. “I was so confused when I got born again – at first I thought I was dreaming, or this was Heaven but when I explained this to my mother, she whisked me straight off to therapy. And then I got cancer and well – now I’m here.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” Seungmin blurted out, his ears hot.

Hyunjin smiled, and Seungmin saw the him from his previous life. “I’m glad you’re here too, Seungmin. But… what do we do about us?”

“We…” Seungmin mused, leaning against a shelf as his right leg protested. “We’re too… young for anything like before-”

“I know, I know!” Hyunjin babbled, his cheeks red at the insinuation. “I d-didn’t mean _that!_ I meant we’re both alive again and this is _crazy_ and-”

Seungmin laughed the sound unfamiliar but easy to his ears. “Don’t _worry,_ Hyunjin. This isn’t my first time being reborn.”

Hyunjin stopped fidgeting then. “Wait, it’s not?”

Seungmin frowned. “I mean it’s my first one ever seeing someone I’ve known in another life before, but I’ve been alive like… a few other different times.”

“Holy cow,” Hyunjin gasped, rolling away slightly. “You’re like immortal.”

_“No,”_ Seungmin corrected shifting his weight smugly. “I’m not immortal – I’ve died many times. It’s just each time I get reborn again. The same day, same time, different year.”

Hyunjin still looked awed. “That’s literally insane.”

“Well, you’re alive too so it’s not that insane,” Seungmin pointed out.

Hyunjin paused, his head cocked. “Oh, I guess you’re right.”

Seungmin shifted his weight again, his leg beginning to ache. “Well in this life do you want to be best friends?”

Hyunjin grinned. “I’d prefer soulmates.”

“Alright, soulmates then.”

And soulmates they became. Their parents quickly became friends both as they were the only Korean parents of terminally ill children, and furthermore the nurses also realised their friendship and moved them into the same ward.

Seungmin didn’t quite know when he would die, but now that he had Hyunjin beck into his life again, time seemed to move quicker. Life was more energetic with the elder around.

More free.

On Seungmin’s eleventh birthday they went down to the beachside. Seungmin pushed Hyunjin’s wheelchair along the wooden planked-path, glad he had something to support himself with.

They reached a little alcove, a wide-open but also sheltered space, on a hill overlooking the insatiable sea.

“I love it here,” Hyunjin breathed as they watched the sunset.

“I love you,” Seungmin smiled easily back.

Sure, it wasn’t the same passionate, sexual love from before – they were far too young in body for that despite their aged minds, but it was a more childlike love. Somehow vibrant with youth but shadowed by age and death at the same time.

But even though the hospital they were confined to lingered of death, it also was a passage of life.

Seungmin learnt this as they trapezed through the halls, one late October afternoon, on their way to the cancer ward, but Hyunjin stopped him with a coo.

“Look at this baby!” he squealed, breaking away from Seungmin’s grasp and rolling himself towards a pram.

“Jin!” Seungmin hissed through his teeth, immediately nodding his apology to the child’s parents at Hyunjin’s now incessant coddling of the newborn.

“Don’t worry about your friend,” the lady, assumedly the mother said to him in Korean.

Seungmin perked his head up at the familiar language, then looked to Hyunjin who was now clapping eagerly as they baby giggled. “How old is… it?”

“He,” the mother corrected with a soft smile. “And only two weeks, he’s here for his check-up.”

Seungmin hummed, keeping back from the child, not wanting to overcrowd him as Hyunjin was moving enough for them both.

“Hyunjin,” he called after the elder almost melted as the child grasped a small hand around his finger. “Come on, my appointment’s soon.”

Hyunjin defeatedly followed and let Seungmin guide him back to their ward.

“Have you ever seen an Asian baby with that much hair before?” the elder chattered as Seungmin fondly rolled his eyes from behind him. “And not just hair – _curly_ hair! I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Asian with ringlets before.”

“Surely once,” Seungmin drawled out, leaning heavier on the others wheelchair as his leg started to stiffen in pain.

“Nope!” Hyunjin turned in his chair to look at him, his face still bright and cheery. “Never!”

Seungmin attempted a smile but as another shot of pain travelled up his leg he gasped and put all his weight onto Hyunjin’s wheelchair.

“Min?” the elder asked, the sound distant and distorted to his ears.

Seungmin tried to move his mouth to formulate an answer but his leg felt like it _burned._ Itched like a million fires and stung like a thousand wasps.

_“Seungmin?!”_ Hyunjin’s voice seemed louder now, more desperate.

Fatigued, he just closed his eyes.

He opened them again back in his hospital bed, an IV drip at his side.

Relief.

He hadn’t died. He could still be with Hyunjin.

“The doctor wants to recommend you walk with a cane now, Min, just to keep you balanced,” his father explained gently.

Seungmin laid in his hospital bed, tossing a signed baseball between his hands. “Okay, Dad.”

His father paused. “You okay, kiddo?”

Seungmin forced a smile. “Yeah.”

And that was how the months went. Christmas, Hyunjin’s twelfth birthday, Seungmin’s twelfth birthday, Christmas again.

It was filled with rehab, walking therapy, healing sessions, beach trips, appointment, laughter, sadness.

It was just life.

“Do you think we were given cancer to punish us because of before?” Hyunjin asked one afternoon as they sat in their usual spot.

Seungmin faltered, licking his lips that had dried. Before certainly referred to their previous life, but what did Hyunjin mean by ‘punish us?’

“Punish us?” Seungmin questioned, almost fearing the answer. “For what? Being gay?”

Hyunjin turned to him, his cheeks pale like the grey sand. And then he laughed.

“No, idiot, not for _us_ us!” he smiled, looking back towards the sea. “I mean for… for never telling anyone about the… disease.”

Seungmin crinkled his nose at the vague word-choice. Was Hyunjin really so nervous about the truth of their past life (for lack of a better term) coming out?

“I think this was just fate,” he eventually decided on. “Twisted fate, morbid, even. You’re in a wheelchair like before, the cancer’s in my leg like where I got shot in one of my previous lives – it’s all fucked up.”

The waves crashed onto the shore.

Hyunjin rested back into his chair again with a hum, his expression shifting into one of thoughtfulness. “Seungmin?”

“Yeah?”

The boy looked hesitant. “Are we the only people reborn?”

“Maybe everyone’s reborn and most don’t remember it. Maybe everyone’s born again and remembers it, but no one brings it up,” Seungmin pointed out but Hyunjin didn’t seem impressed with his proposition, a glum look on his face.

“No,” the elder insisted, “I mean why do you think _you’re_ being reborn over and over again?”

“Well,” Seungmin looked away, wishing to avoid the question that occupied the back of his mind at all times. “You’ve been reborn again too, haven’t you, so your question is invalid-”

“Seungmin,” Hyunjin’s voice was serious now, bordering on impatience. “I’m not playing around this time.”

Seungmin licked his chapped lips again. They tasted faintly of salt, from Sydney’s beach or Iceland’s cold, dark waters he wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know, Hyunjin,” he answered honestly. “I think I’m going to keep being born again until I find the life that’s right for me – until I do what I’m supposed to be here for.”

Hyunjin paused. “And being one of South Korea’s photographers wasn’t that?”

Seungmin looked away. “No. I don’t think it was. If it was – you being a model and me being a photographer – do you think we’d be here today? Two almost-teenagers dying of incurable cancer sitting on a beach. That’s who we are today, in this life, but maybe next life we can be more.”

Hyunjin frowned and Seungmin felt like he said the wrong thing.

“I don’t think we’re in this life just to wait, Min,” the elder argued. “Life isn’t about waiting, it’s about doing.”

Seungmin felt a familiar flash of frustration flicker through his body. “And what are we supposed to do? We can’t fucking _walk,_ Hyunjin! You without your chair and me without my _goddamn cane_ , it’s all a stupid ‘ _homage’_ to our last life! Of death!”

Hyunjin looked caged then, so different to the freedom Seungmin had chased after, and that’s when he really knew he had said the wrong thing.

“You’re an idiot if you believe that Kim Seungmin.”

And Seungmin watched him go.

The ‘healing sessions’ were a little awkward after that.

“Did something happen with Hyunjin?” his mother asked.

Seungmin clunked down the hall. “It’s fine, Mum.”

And that was that.

A week later Seungmin apologised, explaining that the elder was more important than anything in this life and his previous one.

“Life should be the most important thing, Seungmin,” the elder chastised anyway.

Seungmin looked away. “You know how to a poor person a thousand dollars would be the best thing in the world?”

Hyunjin looked perplexed, confused. “What?”

Seungmin bit the inside of his cheek. “Just answer me, Hyunjin.”

“Fine, fine,” the elder shrugged, clicking the ‘lock’ function on his wheelchair. “Yes, to a poor person money is everything.”

“And to a millionaire,” Seungmin continued. “A thousand dollars is barely anything.”

Hyunjin hummed. “Okay?”

“That’s what life is to me, Hyunjin. Life is so important to everyone else on this planet because as far as we know, and as far as they know, they only have one. Nothing else. I have had like – _five!_ And I might keep being born again for the next million years. That’s why life isn’t that important to me anymore, do you understand? Not as important as you.”

Hyunjin didn’t reply then. So Seungmin didn’t continue.

Instead, the elder just extended an earbud on his MP3 Player, the one he had gotten for his birthday.

Seungmin took it. And together, in the storage room of the hospital wing they had made home, the listened.

Seungmin was expecting the news that his treatment plan was failing.

He wasn’t expecting the way his mother sobbed, the way his father held him in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” his father apologised to him one night. “I’m sorry.”

Seungmin felt his heart keen. The apologies almost made it worst.

“I’ll be okay,” he attempted to comfort the man anyway.

“I’m sorry you’re always the strong one, kiddo. You’ve always been strong.”

And Seungmin offered a smile, remembering the last words his past mother ever told him.

“That’s just the way I am.”

“What will happen if you die and I don’t?” Hyunjin asked him as they watched the waves again.

Blankly Seungmin turned to him. “Dunno.”

He had ‘out-lived’ the doctors’ expectations once again, but he, like Hyunjin needed a wheelchair to get around. It was April now; Hyunjin’s thirteenth birthday had passed in a blur. Seungmin had gifted the elder with a magazine he had printed, one that had taken him hours and both languages to find.

It was the one of their first duo shoot. Hyunjin had promised to cherish it.

_“No one can find out,”_ Seungmin had said, imitating Hyunjin’s voice from years before.

Hyunjin had smacked him weakly on the shoulder and laughed.

“I’ve always been older than you because I’m born in March and you’re in September,” Hyunjin began, drawing Seungmin back into the present. “So, seeing that’s were born again on our next birthdays, to make this work, logistically speaking, I am going to have to die at most four months after you do if we’re going to be born in the same ages again next life.”

Seungmin turned to him, incredulous. “God, you’ve really been thinking about this, haven’t you? I’m usually the mathematician of this relationship.”

Hyunjin glared at him sarcastically. “Yeah, we’ll see your math skills when your tumour reaches your brain, dumbass.”

“It’s in my leg right now!” Seungmin protested, bending over and tossing some sand at the elder. “It’s not in my brain yet – I could so ace you in long division.”

“Whatever,” Hyunjin smiled. “Hey Min – what do you want our legacy of this life to be?”

Seungmin cocked an eyebrow. “For real, Jin? I don’t have a legacy in almost all my lives, I don’t need one for this one.”

“But I think it’s important we don’t just sit here and wait to die!” Hyunjin whined, shaking the sand out of his hair. “Please, can you think about it for me?”

Seungmin relented, breathing out the cold wind of the beach. _“Fine.”_

Funny thing was, lying in a hospital bed with the only thing accompanying him being the sound of machinery, (and the new internet being too overloaded to playback historical baseball games), Seungmin had a lot of time to think.

“I want to plant a tree,” he declared to Hyunjin as they sat in their regular spot. “Right here, dedicated to the hospital and dedicated to us.”

“I like that,” Hyunjin grinned. “Nature if like – the opposite of death.”

“Remember the ones around our house in Korea?” Seungmin questioned, rather excited at having a project. “I want ones like that – maple trees.”

They presented their idea to their families in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.

They were also there, as well as with the hospital staff when they planted it.

“I love it, honey,” his mother kissed his forehead, pinched his cheeks.

“It’ll grow strong,” his father ruffled his hair.

Hyunjin grasped his hand.

Seungmin really hoped it would.

“Happy thirteenth birthday!” Hyunjin whisper-cheered; a cake with illegal candles (fire was a safety hazard) in his hands.

Seungmin blinked open his eyes. “Jin? What the hell are you doing? It’s the middle of the night!”

“It’s not _just_ the middle of the night,” Hyunjin proposed, looing smug. “It’s also your birthday! Welcome to teenage-dom!”

“Teenage-dom?” Seungmin questioned but he couldn’t deny the smile on his face, or the flicker, like a candle's flame in his heart. “You’re an idiot, Hwang Hyunjin.”

“Okay,” Hyunjin laughed, his face happy, beautiful. “I love you too.”

Hyunjin had bought him a camera, a Polaroid to be exact. Seungmin had cried.

The Christmas spirit was a strange thing. Seungmin, in his other lives, hadn’t really celebrated Christmas much before, well except in his second life.

He watched as a dressed-up Santa Claus walked around to everyone’s bed, or cot, ringing a bell and cheering in delight. The nurses and doctors were in on it too, wearing reindeer headbands and red noses.

It was a nice sentiment, Seungmin supposed.

It made him feel like sometimes there were good things in life.

Unfortunately, the Christmas spirit didn’t really gift him with any miracles.

He was getting worse, everyone knew.

“I want to go see the tree,” he croaked, tired. “Please?”

His father rolled him there, Hyunjin keeping along by his side.

Seungmin stared at the sapling, held up by a stick in the ground. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“Grow?” Hyunjin corrected with a giggle. “Yes, Min, I think it might.”

Seungmin pouted. “Don’t get snappy with me! I’m about to die!”

Seungmin fell quiet at his own admission. Sure, their lives were confined to cancer, trapped to death, but he had never really said it aloud before.

“This tree will be our legacy,” Hyunjin said solidly.

Seungmin eyed the plaque, they had placed by the foot of the sapling.

_‘The families of Kim and Hwang and Sydney Beachside Hospital.’_

They had decided not to get their individual names engraved into stone. The headstone makers would be doing it soon enough anyway.

“I feel like we’ve lived a little in this life,” Hyunjin said after they were quiet.

Seungmin held out his hand. “I think so too.”

Fireworks were a spectacular thing.

“You made it to the new decade!” Hyunjin cheered at his hospital bed. “ _No_ – the new century – _no_ – the new _millennium!”_

Seungmin chuckled, the laughter scratching his throat. “Didn’t think we’d make it here, huh?”

Hyunjin blinked down at him the red and blue bursts of light from outside dancing in his dark, loving eyes. “We would have one way or another.”

Seungmin laughed again, his head falling back onto the pillow. Hyunjin was right.

“I love you with my everything,” the boy whispered and Seungmin blinked a tear out of his own eye.

“I’ll see you soon, Jinnie,” he croaked.

Hyunjin started to weep then.

“How did you survive?” he questioned, his tears splattering onto Seungmin’s own cheeks.

Seungmin coughed. “Survive what?”

Hyunjin sniffed. “Survive seeing me die before.”

Seungmin could only weakly smile. “I didn’t.”

He let go of Hyunjin’s warm hand. “Get my parents?”

And he watched as Hyunjin left.

He passed away an hour later.

When he woke up, he knew it would be for the final time. There was an inkling at the back of his mind, dread and hope placed simultaneously onto his heart.

This would be his last life.

Knowing this, he poured everything into it.

He was born with everything he could have wanted in his other lives – no war, no poverty, no escaping a dictatorship, no cancer. This time, he could finally live.

He signed up for singing lessons, for the baseball club. He studied harder than he ever had before, worked the newspaper rounds at nine to afford a camera.

He took his first photo of the sea on a school trip. When the other children went swimming, he stayed back, watching from afar.

His parents migrated to America for two years, for his mother’s work and for him to learn English. He felt a little bad that he was already fluent, so instead took the time to examine the new America, starkly intrigued by the skyscrapers and rush of the streets.

It was overwhelming if he was honest. Reminded him so much of his other lives, of what he left behind, or what the wars took from him.

He wondered how old his only daughters would be now; if they had children of their own.

He wished he could remember their names.

Half of him was thankful when he returned to South Korea.

“He’s very mature for his age,” he overheard his English teacher say at the parent-teacher meeting. “Very wise – beyond his years.”

“He’s always doing something, thinking about it too,” his baseball coach applauded, ruffling his hair “This kid is never in wait for something.”

But he was.

Hyunjin hadn’t appeared in this lifetime yet.

Sure, in their first life together Seungmin didn’t meet the other until twenty-two, then in their previous one at ten, but he was tired of waiting.

Hyunjin never liked waiting, despised it. So, Seungmin dedicated himself to doing things instead.

His love for being in front of the camera from his fourth life returned. He smiled as he received the award for ‘most valuable player’ for baseball, ‘first in year level’ for English, ‘winner of annual competition’ for singing.

Even though he tried his best every single day, he felt slightly unattached to this new life, this new world.

The twenty-first century was jarringly different from the 1960s or even just ten years ago. The internet was everywhere, and through it he had access to everything. That scared him. What if someone who happened to know him found his pictures with Hyunjin from their career? They had the same name, same face, same birthdays – surely something would go amiss.

But it didn’t. Everyone at school knew him as Kim Seungmin, the overachiever, the perfect student, the best at baseball and not much else.

At fourteen a video of the torture of North Korean political dissidents was leaked from one of its camps. He remembered his mother from that life. He felt sick again.

He didn’t let his mother and father affect him much this life compared to his previous ones. They supported and loved him whole-heartedly, but he preferred to push them away, treat them like how he treated his foster father of his first life in South Korea.

Was it cruel? Maybe. Was it right? Probably not.

But it was for the best.

They had other sons, his two brothers, anyway. He was fine being the odd-one-out.

When he watched a television broadcast, not one of propaganda but one of a music show with ten people dancing and singing on a stage, and found his first DAY6 song, he decided what he wanted to do this life.

“I want to be an idol,” he said to his parents at fifteen.

They replied with a simple ‘okay.’

Even though Seungmin liked the think he had so much time in the world being in a cycle of reincarnations, there really wasn’t enough time in one day for all his multitude of activities.

He dropped baseball for idol training at a small company. It was for the best.

“You can’t dance Seungmin, and if you can’t dance, you’ll fail,” was the harsh advice they gave him.

So, he danced. What else did he have besides this goal? Not Hyunjin yet – that was for sure.

Besides, Hyunjin loved the cameras, the fame, more than him. For some reason, Seungmin felt like he’d meet the other on his path to stardom.

So, he danced, and he sang, and he sweated, and he cried when it all felt like too much. One afternoon, after he'd stayed up late to study for a test, he fell while dancing. Straight onto an un-hammered nail.

“That looks like it’s going to scar,” one of his trainee friends said blankly as the nail was pried out of his left thigh with pliers.

“It’ll be fine,” Seungmin lied, staring as blood oozed out of the wound.

It was always his left thigh, wasn’t it?

He left the company a year later.

“I won’t get anywhere if I’m not in BigHit or the Main Three,” he shrugged as he told the manager, just as harshly as she had criticised him. “Thanks for your time.”

After more vigorous training and even a few singing competitions, he managed to draw the attention of a scout from JYP.

“You have very conventional looks,” the man said, dressed in a suit and tie. “Strong jaw, soft eyes - remind me of a model from the sixties.”

Seungmin felt his heart rate spike.

“Thank you,” he replied as curtly and calmly as he could manage. “I hope to keep in touch?”

The man smiled. “I’ll call if I need.”

And he did. There was a singing competition for a place in JYP. It was basically perfect.

Maybe the gods were giving him some help for the shit hand they dealt him in his previous two lives, because by some miracle and a _smidge_ his hard work, he won.

“Thank you for this opportunity,” he shook the man’s hand a genuine, but reserved smile of his face.

“Don’t worry about it,” the man bowed slightly. “And hey – Seungmin. You’re still a kid, you know that, right?”

Seungmin frowned, puzzled by the rather specific question. “Of course, I know that. I’m sixteen.”

The man clapped his back. “Well… loosen up a little then. You act like you’re fifty.”

The man left Seungmin rather perplexed. He wasn’t quite sure if that was a compliment or not. Still, he decided to ignore the other’s advice, stop being a kid, and move out into the JYP dorms for the purpose of easy travel and timesaving.

“Be safe Seungmin,” his mother said as he left his childhood home.

He froze, his response familiar on his tongue. “I will be.”

And he left.

JYP was as scary as it was intriguing. Every turn there was someone who could be chosen to debut before him (a challenger) and people who would never debut at all.

_I have to win,_ he thought as he danced into the night.

_I have to win,_ he thought as he pushed himself to do another set of one-hundred push-ups.

_I have to win,_ he thought as he kept to himself: making friends would just distract him.

_I have to-_

Him.

Seungmin almost fell in his step, drawing attention from the surrounding trainees.

Hyunjin had stopped too, looking slightly less taken aback.

Seungmin felt the first genuine smile break onto his face since he came to the company three months ago.

They snuck into a storage closet, reminding Seungmin of the hospital.

“I found you again,” Hyunjin whispered, his lips apart in disbelief.

Emotion, like a wave, overpowering him, he crashed his lips to Hyunjin’s own, holding his face with his hands; clinging on like if he drew away, Hyunjin would disappear again.

The taste of salt, like seawater, fell onto his lip.

“I’m here,” Hyunjin breathed again and Seungmin wondered when he had started crying. “I’m here, Min, I’m here.”

And Seungmin felt safe in his embrace.

With Hyunjin by his side, Seungmin slowly started to shed the cold demeanour he had built around him this whole life. He started nodding at the squirrel-cheeked trainee in his dance class who he had brushed off all other times before. He started attempting small talk with the amazing singer in he saw sometimes in the halls.

At nights he lied with Hyunjin.

“No one can find out,” Hyunjin said, dancing his pale fingers across Seungmin’s waist and pelvis, stopping at the scar caused by the un-hammered nail on his thigh.

Seungmin was quiet for a second. “Why are you so afraid of being true to yourself?”

Hyunjin’s gentle movement stopped. “It’s not Seungmin – don’t be unfair. If anyone finds out about us, we’ll be kicked out of here and shamed. I know you think South Korea’s changed a lot since we were last here, but it hasn’t, okay?”

Seungmin bit his lip, half of his wanting to continue his argument, the one he seemed to have with Hyunjin almost every lifetime.

Instead, he replied, “Okay.”

Hyunjin, of course, was right again.

The homophobic attitudes that permeated many of the trainees were frightening. Besides, if they revealed their love, perhaps one afternoon a curly-haired trainee wouldn't have walked up to them.

“Kim Seungmin and Hwang Hyunjin, right?” he asked with a dimpled smile.

Seungmin saw Hyunjin, in his cheery amiability about to reply, so he cautiously tugged the back of his shirt gently. A warning.

“Hello,” Seungmin started, taking note of the other’s frizzy curls flattened by a snap-back cap, wondering why his heart told him it was so familiar. “How do you know our names?”

The trainee looked slightly baffled and shifted from foot to foot. “I’m Bang Chan and uh – I’m forming a little group. I’ve heard a little about you both and I was wondering if you were interested to join?”

“We’ll check it out,” Seungmin answered, perfunctory, before Hyunjin could accept.

“You don’t need to answer for me,” Hyunjin hissed quietly as they followed ‘Bang Chan’ down the labyrinth of halls.

“Sorry,” he replied simply.

Hyunjin sighed from beside him, and quickly Seungmin analysed the other’s facial expression. Okay – he was pissed, probably fair.

“Jin,” he attempted again, hoping the nickname would soften the elder’s mood. “Jin, I’m sorry, okay? You’re not an idiot, it’s just-”

“Here we are!” Chan unknowingly interrupted, stopping at a door.

Seungmin cut off his apology and covertly squeezed the elder’s hand, hoping that it would be enough to encourage the other for now.

“How many people are in this… group?” Hyunjin asked before they went in.

“As of right now, four, not including you two,” Chan replied, and Seungmin noticed the flash on insecurity travel across his face before it was replaced with jovial confidence.

Seungmin narrowed his eyes. Desperation.

Faintly, he recalled that one trainee had been at JYP for almost six years. He wondered if Chan was him.

The group were like children who had been told to be of their best behaviour (namely the squirrel-like boy in his dance class Jisung and a fifteen-year-old Yang Jeongin) but at the same time, Seungmin felt oddly threatened. Maybe it was the stone-faced scary-looking trainee who rested at the back, who introduced himself as ‘Seo Changbin’ and said nothing else.

Maybe it was the fact that they all radiated an overwhelming sense of drive and talent that even Seungmin himself wasn’t sure if he possessed.

More than anything, the four were like underdogs.

And Seungmin wasn’t sure why but that scared him.

“What do you think?” he asked Hyunjin when they walked back for his opinion, keeping in mind their small bickering from that afternoon.

“I think it’s perfect,” Hyunjin grinned in reply, essentially vibrating with energy. With freedom.

Seungmin bit his lip. He had his doubts about the whole thing, yes – forming a group without instruction from the higher-ups, even if Chan assumedly did get JYP’s permission, could still be seen as an act of rebellion. It would definitely make no favours with the other trainees if they weren’t in the group – especially if it drew some attention.

But Hyunjin, his beautiful, free Hyunjin. He would move mountains for him.

And who knew – perhaps it could be… fun.

“Alright,” he decided, taking Hyunjin’s hand. “Let’s do it.”

Training was no easy task.

Seungmin told Woojin about the team and with Chan’s convincing the eldest became their seventh member.

After another two months, Chan introduced a freckled Australian boy to the team as their eighth, and hot-shot ex-backup dancer as their ninth.

He celebrated his birthday in the training room, his friends, along with the recently-turned-seventeen ‘twins’ Jisung and Felix. There wasn’t enough time for three parties, Changbin, whom Seungmin was still slightly fearful of, had decreed and with Chan’s agreement, they celebrated their birthday’s as one.

“Hyunjin, you’re birthday’s up next right?” Felix asked in slightly-broken Korean.

Seungmin bit back a smile at the elder’s attempt; he hadn’t gotten used to the formal use of ‘hyung’ at the end of people’s names, and the rest constantly had to remind him.

“No, Innie’s next is he not?” Hyunjin replied, assured by Jeongin’s nod. “He’s February.”

Felix looked perplexed. “But aren’t you born in two-thousand with us?”

The conversation had now gained the attention of Woojin and Minho too.

“Yes?” Hyunjin tilted his head similarly confused.

Felix truly frowned then. “So, then your birthday will be before January, will it not?”

Seungmin couldn’t hide his giggle then. “Hyunjin’s birthday is in March – he’s months older than us.”

Felix turned to him. “Then why don’t you call him ‘hyung?’”

Seungmin froze. Oh god, of course, Felix, who was learning South Korea’s culture and language would pick up on his omission of the required ‘hyung’ at the end of his sentences.

“I noticed that too,” Minho, who was still getting comfortable around the group, wrinkled his nose. “It’s… strange.”

Alarmed, staring back at Hyunjin who looked just as panicked, Seungmin let out a wobbly laugh.

He was fine. It was cool.

Just deflect, leave no more room for questions, and move on.

“I never noticed,” he lied breezily. “Guess it just slipped my mind.”

They were more careful around the other members. Seungmin forced himself to add on the strange sounding ‘hyung’ whenever he talked to Hyunjin and Hyunjin stopped holding his hand as much or sat beside Woojin or Changbin instead.

He would never sit beside Jisung though – the pair were a constant headache. Fighting, bickering and being childish whenever they were in the same room.

Seungmin attempted to talk to Hyunjin about it but the other closed up. After another month, Chan took things into his own hands ordering everyone else but the two in question out.

Seungmin could still hear the elder’s snotty tears when he crumpled into his bed that night.

Hence, he was slightly wary when Chan called them all for a team meeting one morning.

“We’ve got a chance,” Chan said, clapping his hands together, a dimpled smile on his face.

“What?” Jisung questioned for him.

“A chance,” Chan repeated. “To debut.”

It was so quiet they could hear the muffled music from the neighbouring soundproof room.

“Debut?” Changbin asked, his eyes wet.

“Debut,” Chan reaffirmed, his own eyes sparkling with emotion.

And chance, they took.

Minho was eliminated first. Felix, after.

He let himself cry while the cameras were still rolling. He promised himself later that it wasn’t for personal gains. And that night he snuck into Hyunjin’s room, climbed into his bed, and held the boy close.

It could have been him.

If it had been Hyunjin, he would have left too.

“I feel like I’ve failed us,” Chan whispered as the seven of them sat on the dance practice floor, disheartened.

“Don’t feel like that-” Jisung pouted, reaching over to give the elder a side-hug.

“You didn’t fail them, hyung,” Changbin, his voice cold and heartless, interrupting the sombre mood of the room.

Seungmin swallowed, his heart racing at the elder’s scowl.

What he wasn’t expecting was the other to start to cry. “They were both in my group. I did.”

They became closer that night. Seungmin let himself feel for the others, give a few of them, especially Jeongin who he had taken a liking to, a small embrace.

“This is so screwed up,” Hyunjin whispered his cheeks flushed.

Jisung nodded. Maybe it was the only thing the pair could agree on.

Seungmin worked harder, for him and for Hyunjin.

And when all of them stood on their debut stage together, as nine, Seungmin felt like he had earned it. They all had.

He was walking with Felix and Woojin when he stopped, his eye catching the store’s display.

“You okay?” Woojin asked softly.

Seungmin nodded quickly, collecting himself. “I’ll just be a minute, wait here.”

When the three returned to the dorm, Seungmin with a cardboard box in his hand, he gathered the members.

Hyunjin gave him an odd stare, and Seungmin could read the question in his eyes. ‘ _Are you alright?_ ’

“I…” Seungmin started, nervously tossing the box between his hands, thankful for the baseball skills that gave him nimble fingers. “I know we just debuted last month, but I wanted to get us all a gift. Something for us as one.”

Carefully he opened the box.

“Tissues?” Jisung prodded, looking confused.

“They’re handkerchiefs,” Minho corrected with a fond smile.

“There’s…” Changbin started, his eyes scanning the box. “Nine.”

Seungmin swallowed back the nerves that had risen in his chest. “Y-Yeah, I thought we could all… have one.”

Jeongin went first, choosing the mustard-yellow one with a wide smile.

Hyunjin followed, picking the navy blue one with a familiar playful, but loving shine in his eye.

Seungmin faltered when Chan chose the red one, his heart wanting to take it back immediately. His only wife had given him one similar to that. He had held it as he drowned.

With Woojin picking the second-last handkerchief, a dark green one, the box was almost empty.

“What colour did you get, hyung?” Jeongin asked.

Seungmin carefully picked it up. “White.”

“I think it suits you well,” Changbin, who had the salmon one, dipped his head in approval.

Seungmin chuckled, wrapping it around his knuckles experimentally. He was reminded of his mother, his first Halley’s Comet, the first war.

“Thanks.”

Seungmin didn’t expect their first comeback, ‘I AM: WHO’ to be more difficult that debut.

Now they all had expectations upon them, and it took its toll. Chan stayed up later and later, Felix ate less and less, Hyunjin stared at his reflection in the mirrors for longer and longer.

Hyunjin was, in fact, doing that, sitting on the dance practice floor, as Seungmin cuddled him from behind.

“You’re beautiful,” Seungmin reassured the other, hesitantly pressing his lips to the other’s cheek. “You know that, right?”

Hyunjin sighed, and Seungmin wondered if he had once again said the wrong thing. “I just feel like all I am is the 'visual.' Like I don’t actually have any talent.”

Seungmin pulled back, affronted. “Jin, don’t _say_ that.”

He was about to comfort the elder, but the door opened to the rest of the team and guiltily Seungmin scrambled away from Hyunjin to beside the elder.

The team, especially Chan, looked slightly conflicted at Seungmin’s rather obvious startlement before ‘My Pace’ came on over the speakers.

Seungmin blamed his red cheeks and ears on the exercise.

“We don’t care if you two hug, ya know?” Chan said, attempting to sound nonchalant, in the car ride home.

Seungmin, who of course was sitting next to Hyunjin, froze when all attention turned towards him.

“Yeah,” Jisung piped in, turning towards him. “It’s good to show affection.”

Seungmin felt his skin prickle; Hyunjin tense from beside him.

Their first life together had been defined by secrecy – circumscribed by cautiousness and fear that someone, anyone would discover their homosexual relations and destroy both of their careers and legacies. And in the end, both their relationship and secrets had been what killed them.

As the car hit a pothole, Seungmin was jolted out of his memories.

“Guys?” was Minho’s question.

“Um – what?” Hyunjin stammered, as flushed and as restless as Seungmin himself.

“Physical affection,” Woojin tried softly, noticing their shared discomfort. “It’s… normal.”

“W-We’re not _affectionate,_ ” Hyunjin protested, shrinking into his seat.

Seungmin felt his stomach drop. He understood the other’s distressed objection but that _slightly_ hurt.

“We’re fine, alright?” he snapped; his voice harsher than intended.

No one questioned it.

That night he and Hyunjin were awkward, stilted.

“South Korea hasn’t changed from fifty years ago,” Hyunjin said to him, his voice constricted and somewhat emotionless. “It still hates and punishes people like us.”

Seungmin felt his eyes prickle with tears.

“No one can find out,” he said their catchphrase, his voice wavering.

Hyunjin nodded in a hopeless defeat. “No one.”

They were filming an episode of a reality show, and it was going pretty well.

“You can either take the zipline or the ferry to the other side of the lake,” the woman in charge of the camp-resort said with a smile.

Seungmin glanced at the black, cold waves; the uneasy ripples of the lake.

He took the zipline instead.

Seungmin was brewing some morning lemon tea for him and Minho when Jeongin came into the kitchen.

“Hyungie, can you help me with my homework?” the younger asked, a childish smile on his face.

“Sure,” Seungmin set down the kettle. “What is it with?”

“History,” Jeongin replied, chipper for the early hours of the morning.

From across the dorm, he heard Chan and Felix yell, assumedly at some video game Woojin was no doubt winning in and Seungmin shared an eye-roll and fond grin with the maknae.

The younger guided him to his laptop. “I just need some help reading the English here; I’m making a report on Korea’s migration throughout history and I don’t really understand this article.”

Seungmin frowned, remembering he had to pretend he wasn’t completely fluent in English. “This has some long words Innie… are you sure you don’t want to get Chan or Felix to help?”

Jeongin had an unfamiliar look in his eye; one Seungmin recognised as insecurity.

“I don’t want to bother them,” Jeongin flashed him a grin. “And I think you’re really good at English, hyung.”

Seungmin turned back to the article with a fuzzy feeling in his chest. “Alright, I’ll do my best – let’s see what this says.”

Quickly, but also pretending he was struggling, he skimmed the article. It made him have a strange feeling in his gut – Jeongin had clicked onto a website that showed Korean migration into the United States in the early to mid 1900s.

He kept reading; translating the words Jeongin didn’t know and learning some facts himself.

And then he saw it.

It was a greyscale photo, pixelated, obviously taken with an old camera that features three soldiers, one of which was Korean.

One of which was him.

_‘Thee American Soldiers at French village of Baccarat’_ the caption read.

It was his photo. The one he took with his friends at the time before the attack.

“You found anything?” Jeongin asked, looking up from his notebook to the laptop screen.

Seungmin immediately closed the tab, his hands feeling clammy.

“Nah, Innie,” he lied, his chest starting to heave. “I found uh – nothing. I’ll be right back, okay?”

He managed to make it into Hyunjin’s embrace before he spiralled into a panic attack.

“They’re going to know, J-Jinnie,” he panted, his whole body shaking. “They’re going to find out – no one was sup-supposed to find out-”

“Hey, baby, it’s okay – just breathe, alright?” Hyunjin sat up, taking his hand. “It’s okay, you’re okay-”

“Min, you got my tea?” Minho barged in, then froze when he saw them. “Um – I’ll get it then, and yours – of course.”

Lemon tea was a rather calming substance, and that, along with his white handkerchief Hyunjin had raced to get out of his bedside table, Seungmin felt the breath return to his lungs.

In a matter of five minutes he had calmed down, Hyunjin rubbing his back and Minho sitting silently at the end of the bed, just observing.

Hyunjin quietly asked Chan to cancel their schedules at breakfast and the elder hesitantly agreed.

Seungmin and Hyunjin spent the rest of the day watching old Choi Eunhee movies, cuddled under a blanket, reliving their glory days.

This time Seungmin didn’t move away from the elder when the other seven returned home.

“Choi Eunhee?” Woojin asked, sitting beside them. “I didn’t know you two were a fan.”

“She’s my idol,” Hyunjin murmured, squeezing Seungmin’s hand playfully under the guise of grabbing the remote.

“Interesting,” Woojin noted with a warm smile. “Should I get everyone else and we can watch one all together? Or would you rather it just be you two.”

Seungmin glanced at Hyunjin, their eyes sharing a silent conversation.

“You can get the others, we can start a new one,” Seungmin offered quietly and Woojin sent him an appraising nod.

When the other members arrived, it took everything in Seungmin, and assumedly in Hyunjin too, not to move away. In seeing Felix and Changbin cuddle up, then Jisung and Minho, as the movie went on, Seungmin felt more comfortable showing his affection.

And as all nine of them watched the movie, chattering and eating popcorn Jisung had snuck into the dorm, Seungmin felt himself have a little fun.

“I think this will be my final life,” he said out of the blue one night to Hyunjin.

The elder sat up. “What?”

“My last one,” Seungmin repeated, his eyes downcast. “I can feel it.”

The elder was quiet for a moment before he sunk back into the pillows. “I guess you have a sense for these things, huh?”

“Maybe,” Seungmin replied.

They were quiet. The sound of Jisung screaming through the walls pierced Seungmin’s ears. ‘Stray Kids’ had decided to have a game night and the other seven were playing a card game Seungmin distantly remembered from Australia; Chan had introduced it.

The memory slightly sour, the pair had decided to head to bed early, preferring their present and togetherness rather than the illness that plagued bother their lives before.

“Do you think we’ll die of illness this time too?” Hyunjin asked, almost reading his mind. “Every time we’ve been alive together, we’ve died of a disease or cancer.”

Seungmin sighed, not wanting to think about it. He rolled into a pillow, wishing he could just fall asleep, but Hyunjin poked his shoulder.

“Hey,” the elder prodded, sitting up again, and motioning for Seungmin to do the same.

“What?” he complained moodily but following the other’s position.

Hyunjin looked at him with a gaze so intense Seungmin thought his heart would fail him then and there. “This life we are the poor.”

The absurdity of the other’s statement broke him from his grumpiness and made him chortle. “ _What?_ ”

Hyunjin’s expression didn’t change. “Seungmin _we_ aren’t the millionaires this time!”

His humour evaporated at the elder’s rather uncharacteristic seriousness. “Jin, what are you talking about?”

Hyunjin grabbed his hands like one did at the altar. “Seungmin do you remember our last life? What you told me? You said life wasn’t important to you and death didn’t scare you because it had happened so many times. But if this is our final life, we are the poor people again and life is – life is priceless.”

Seungmin felt his eyes water embarrassingly. “No, you are priceless, Hyunjin.”

The elder chuckled, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. “Well then, you are too.”

Seungmin enjoyed the ‘I AM: YOU’ comeback.

He had learnt to deal with fame better since their last release, had better connections with his teammates, his skills in dancing and singing had improved and overall extremely liked the style of music 3RACHA had produced for them.

Furthermore, for his nineteenth birthday, Hyunjin and Jeongin presented him with a camera.

“Do you like it, Hyung?” Jeongin asked, that same bright-eyed expression on his face.

“I love it, Innie,” Seungmin ruffled the other’s hair.

He made eye-contact with Hyunjin, reminded of his previous life’s final birthday. “Thanks.”

He liked to take photos. It reminded him of his second and fourth lives.

“We’re going on our first world tour!” Jisung squealed, as Chan and Changbin told them all the news. Seungmin wished he had his camera to capture everyone's pure bliss.

“And we can visit Australia!” Jeongin gasped, clinging onto Felix, then peering up excitedly at Chan. “We can see your hometowns!”

And that they did.

Unfortunate for him, he injured his left ankle a day before they left Seoul.

“You won’t be able to dance,” the doctor told him, sympathetic. “I’m sorry.”

He just nodded quietly and left.

Concerts were a terrifying but invigorating experience. Their first was in Bangkok, and second in Jakarta.

They all were buzzing with a tired excitement when they boarded the plane to Melbourne. Chan looked close to tears already.

He watched the crowd from his seat on the stage, danced only the parts with his upper body. He put all his effort into his vocals; having no excuse to fumble a note.

His ankle throbbed the flight to Sydney and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the change in air pressure or the warning of where he was about to be.

Australia hadn’t changed much, he decided. Sure, this time he could actually explore, not just confined to a bed and contained to the four walls of the hospital, but from what he could tell, it was pretty similar.

Still, he had to use crutches to hop around from Felix’s to Chan’s home, and then when they went to the local tourist attractions such as the Sydney Opera house. It was a homage of sorts to the cane he had once used all those years ago.

“We have the afternoon off,” Chan clapped his hands together. “I’m going to visit my family before we leave tomorrow, but everyone is free to do whatever they please.”

Seungmin declined when Jeongin, Minho and Woojin offered to take him shopping. He also didn’t attend the visit to Felix’s or Chan’s family; knowing they would prefer to go alone.

“What are your plans?” Changbin asked, lying in the hotel’s bed; down with a cold.

“Might go do something with Hyunjin,” he said vaguely, despite knowing exactly where he wanted to go.

“Don’t get lost,” Jisung sang and Seungmin rolled his eyes playfully, appreciative to the elder as he was keeping Changbin company for the day.

“I won’t,” he promised and with that, he left.

“You know how to get there?” Hyunjin asked when it was just the two of them.

Seungmin heard the hesitance in his voice. “Yeah.”

They were quiet as they sat on the train to their destination. Thinking.

They arrived at sundown.

“I might use the bathroom,” Hyunjin excused himself walking the opposite direction, and Seungmin bit his lip.

He was alone now, despite the fact the elder would return in mere minutes.

He took a deep breath, collected himself.

And then he walked. He hadn’t been back here in nineteen years.

The tree was beautiful.

But as he drew closer to the red-orange leaves, glimmering in the sunset, he realised he wasn’t alone.

_“Hello?”_ he stared using English that naturally rolled off his tongue.

The elderly man rose off the bench, then stared at him, seemingly alarmed. Seungmin quickly scanned the man’s posture and seeing a Korean-Hangul necklace resting on his clothed collarbone, along with a camera, he switched languages.

“Excuse me?” he tried again, not knowing why his heart had started to uncontrollably race.

“I’m sorry,” he cleared her throat with a lost smile. “You just… look like my son. This uh- tree was planted for him.”

Seungmin felt his breath catch in his throat and he thanked the gods Hyunjin wasn’t here with him now.

“Oh,” he said dumbly, glancing to the engraved plaque in memorial, sitting proudly at the bottom of the now fully-grown maple. “I’m… sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” the man replied, still looking slightly uncomfortable. “What’s your name?”

He swallowed and wondered why fate had been so cruel. “Ju Leeseok.”

The man, his past father, offered him a watery smile. “Well, I should be going then. Have a nice evening, Ju Leeseok.”

And he watched him leave.

When Hyunjin found him, he let himself cry.

“The timing is so…” Hyunjin wrinkled his nose, holding his hand. “Strange.”

Seungmin nodded stiffly, the taste of sea salt on his lips once again. He lifted the camera to his face and through blurry vision, snapped a photograph of the sun setting behind the sea’s horizon, illuminating the tree’s leaves.

This photo would be one he cherished.

“I can’t believe we found ourselves back here,” Hyunjin said as the sun started to disappear. “You have a cane and everything.”

“Shut up,” Seungmin weakly protested, jostling the other’s shoulder.

They were quiet once again as the sun’s orange started to fade away.

But for some reason, returning here, a place he had spent so much of his previous life, made him feel empowered: free.

“I love you, Hwang Hyunjin,” he choked out, his emotions overflowing.

Hyunjin turned to him, his face as beautiful as the first time they met in this life, and the previous ones before it.

“I love you too, Seungmin.”

They held each other as they watched the sun disappear. The maple tree – their symbol of strength and constancy, rusted comfortingly in the wind beside them.

Seungmin turned to Hyunjin, who was still wholly entranced by the ethereal scenery around them.

He raised his camera, not needing to look through the lens to capture the perfect photo, the perfect human, the perfect moment.

Then, just as his finger hovered over the button, he paused. He set the camera at his side.

And instead, taking Hyunjin’s warm hand instead of the cold plastic, he turned back to the sun and watched too.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys!
> 
> I'm back - apologies for the wait. Essentially I stared a million one-shots and got writers-block mid-way, but thankfully I started this one around a week ago, loved the idea and managed to finish it. 
> 
> So, how did you enjoy it? Did you like the characters? I know it doesn't focus much on 'Stray Kids' apart from Seungmin and Hyunjin - I think if I gave everyone depth I think it would have detracted from the ideas of 'Capture' and would have just made it way longer.
> 
> LIVES/EVENTS/SYMBOLISM:
> 
> 1\. 1887-1888 - Korea, Historical Event and Death - Baby Riots - No Lesson, just irony because of cameras.
> 
> 2\. 1888-Early 1918 - US, Historical Event - WWI, Death - Bombardment of Rogue Bouquet - Just shows his first true cycle of life and discovery of cameras. Important Items/Symbols - White Handkerchief, Photo with Friends.
> 
> 3\. 1918-Oct 1941 - US, Historical Event WWII, Death - Drowning (USS Reuben James Sinking), born into poverty juxtaposing previous life, only life has children (legacy), Important Items - Wife Sang, Red Handkerchief, Racism
> 
> 4\. 1942-March 1986 - North/South Korea, Historical Events - Japanese Reign and Korean War (background), Rebels against North Korea, Homophobia, Superstar Choi Eunhee Kidnapping/Escape, Death - AIDS, Important Items/Symbols - Meet HJ, Photography, Secret Love - basically just the 'no one can find out' line.
> 
> 5\. 1986-Jan 1st 2000 - Australia, No major Historical Events, Death - Cancer, Important Items/Symbols - Discovers baseball, the inevitability of death, The Maple Memorial Tree. (Also sees Chan as a baby with Hyunjin)
> 
> 6\. 2000-Now - South Korea, The 'canon-compliant' life. He is very unattached to life, unlike other lives he does not grow close to parents. Highlight how lives have changed him but how love and friendship open him up again. Due to the modern world/internet, his lives 'intertwine' a lot more here - WWI Photo, Australia tree, etc.  
> 
> 
> CHARACTER ANALYSIS:
> 
> So Seungmin is the protagonist and basically it's just how he lives and dies and how, as the work continues, he becomes less attached to life and more bitter mainly seen in final two lives. He loves Hyunjin very much and holds the elder superior to life itself, which has its own problems that aren't really explored in this as it's through his narrative voice. 
> 
> With the whole camera thing and the ending, so much of it is how photos capture moments that define history (WWI/Modelling) but at the end, he realises he needs to live in the present and not always take the 'perfect photo' hence why he puts down the camera and holds Hyunjin's hand instead.
> 
> Hyunjin is described as being very 'free' something that Seungmin, who lived in 'captivity' of North Korea and War, cherishes. However, depending on how you read this, Hyunjin is not very free. He is extremely afraid of being 'outed' as homosexual in the two 'fame' lives whereas Seungmin realises there's more to life than being held down by something as 'small' as sexuality. HJ is also infatuated with the idea of a legacy where SM doesn't mind, however, most of his lives do have a legacy after them even if he doesn't realise this.
> 
> Their relationship is also interesting to me - in which they are all defined by secrecy (physically shown through the heavily stigmatised AIDS in life 4.) The line 'no one can find out' reflects HJ's own insecurity and fear, and there's no 'happy ending' where they 'overcome' this or 'come out' or really show their affection for each other around the other members. Homophobia/fear still rules their relationship and they are both extremely uncomfortable with 'being affectionate' as seen through the car scene. IDK, That's my take!  
> 
> 
> EASTER EGGS:
> 
> Each 'element' of Seungmin's life in the final life are influenced by his prior ones (likes singing because of his wife in 3rd, and baseball because of father in 5th) etc. Also, Hyunjin and Seungmin actually saw Chan as a baby (born in 1998) in the hospital which I thought was leaning into the idea of lives crossing over. The internet further intertwined his previous lives, for the good and bad (as for a lot of the time he was worried someone would figure out he and HJ were the models from 1900s.) 
> 
> Finally, I know it was confusing, but his past mothers and fathers/ some side characters were never named. This is to show that Seungmin's lived so many lives he can't even keep track of it all, and can't remember every single detail. Highlighted in when he can't even remember his daughters' names from life 3.
> 
> Okay, so I'm done. Sorry for the long note? IDK I think long notes look so ugly after a fic, but I want to give you guys as much insight into my writing as possible and I love going over the symbolism and choices.
> 
> I AM YOU Chapter Four up next! I'll try to post another one-shot soon!
> 
> Please comment I need validation uwu lol.
> 
> Talic


End file.
